Spielgelman, Art, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History and And Here My Troubles Began (1978-1991)

Thèmes abordés

Spielgelman, Art, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History and And Here My Troubles Began, Holocaust, deportation, comic book, WW2, animals, graphic novel, book review

Résumé du document

Let me begin with a short biography of the author. Art Spiegelman was born on February 15th, 1948, in Stockholm. He is the son of Vladek and Anja who are Polish Jews who survived to the Holocaust and the deportation in Auschwitz. His parents' life left its mark on his own life and his work. He is a cartoonist and his main work is Maus, a comic book which tells his father's life during World War II. The publication of Maus was progressive. In 1972, a three-pages strip called Maus was published in Funny Animals. In 1977, first Spiegelman's strips were gathered in a collection untitled BREAKDOWNS, From Maus to Now.

Extraits

[...] We can notice that Art Spiegelman see this dead old brother as a rival. He developed a sense of inferiority regarding him.3 What is also very original and interesting in Maus is the fact that the author gives his own point of view about his work. The process of writing is a real part of the story. Art Spiegelman expresses his feeling during the time he wrote the book. He is absolutely not self-confident. He has a lot of doubts and interrogations about his work. [...]

[...] Art Spiegelman appropriates this image and that's a strong and deep choice. The author also emphasizes the fact that the Jews, as mice, had to hide during the war and that's an important aspect of Art's father's life during WW2. The choice to use mice to represent Jews is also very ironic because we can think about Mickey Mouse, the most famous mouse in comics history and there is a gap between Mickey Mouse and the themes of Maus. We can analyse the use of animals instead of human faces by saying that there was no more humanity during the war. [...]

[...] Art Spiegelman succeeded in combining these two universes. He deserves his Pulitzer Prize. I really love this book. I knew it before working on it. After reading it we are shaken, deeply moved, and we discover again the dark side of humanity. It changes from the “holocaust literature” genre with the structure life before/hell/life after.3 This book is a real shock and humanity sometimes needs shocks like that to remember. We should never forget what happened and this book is the perfect way to remember. [...]

[...] The feeling of guilt is one of the most important theme in Maus. This feeling is important in survivors' stories in general. As many survivors' children, Art Spiegelman feels guilty because he had a better life than his parents' one. After the publication of the first volume and its unexpected success, Art Spiegelman represented himself, at the beginning of the second volume, with a mask of a mouse guilt-ridden above a pile of corpses, the corpses of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust (p.201)[4]. [...]

[...] This allows the reader to feel close to Art Spiegelman and if the readers feel close to him, they feel close to his father, so they feel close to all the victims of the Holocaust. It is another way to include the reader in the story. This book, or comic book, or graphic novel, whatever we call it, is very poignant. It is even more poignant because comics are generally associated with the idea of casualness, or something read by children. The criticism of Time Out sums up quite well the work saying that artwork is so accomplished, forceful and moving, without resorting to sentimentality, that it works”2. [...]